MotoGP: Stoner versus Doohan

Something that people like me keep saying is that Casey Stoner is the next Doohan, or a clone of Mick Doohan, or even Doohan in disguise. Well, they're both Aussies, they're both motorcycle Grand Prix world champions, but what other similarities and differences are there?

Besides both being Australian, the thing that links Stoner and Doohan in most people's minds is their style of winning. Get to the front and disappear, not to be seen again until the chequered flag drops. In the late 1990's, Mick Doohan was celebrated and cursed in equal measure for being a genius who made racing dull because he led from start to finish, seemingly every time out. The same criticisms were levelled at Casey Stoner last year, with devastating victories such as at Laguna Seca where he was literally out of sight of his rivals.

Mick Doohan won his first 500cc GP world championship in 1994. From 14 races, he won 9, finished on the podium in all 14 and had 6 pole positions. A stunning performance, which is eerily similar to Casey Stoner's record in 2007, during which Stoner took 10 wins, 14 podiums and 5 poles from 18 starts.

Doohan's best year was 1997, when he didn't so much tear up the record books as drop a nuke on them. That year consisted of 15 races. Doohan was on pole 12 times, took 12 victories and a pair of 2nd places, and scored 340 points from a possible 375. Holy cow!!!

By the time he was forced to retire due to injury, Mick Doohan had won the 500GP title 5 times in a row, won 54 races, taken 95 podiums, 58 pole positions and 46 fastest laps. Looking at the stats, it's pretty obvious why Doohan is regarded as one of the greatest Grand Prix riders of all time.

While Mick Doohan's championship victory in 1994 had been creeping up on the world for a while (he had finished 3rd, 2nd, 2nd and 4th in the championship in the 4 seasons leading up to '94), Casey Stoner's victory took everybody completely by surprise. In common with Doohan, Stoner spent his first year in the top class repeatedly falling off a Michelin-shod Honda. However, while Mick didn't win the title until his 6th year, Stoner incredibly became champion in just his 2nd year racing against the big boys.

Early in 2007, it was pointed out that the list of riders who have won 3 out of the first 4 races in a season was an interesting one, consisting of Duke, Surtees, Hocking, Hailwood, Agostini, Sheene, Roberts Sr, Spencer, Lawson, Rainey, Doohan, Rossi and Stoner. It's a virtual Who's Who of GP bike racing, and the rest of the young Aussie's season kept him right up there.

One interesting similarity between Stoner and Doohan is with their bikes. In 1997, Doohan switched to Honda's "screamer" engine, which was more powerful but harder to control, in other words it would chuck the rider down the street as soon as look at him. The other HRC riders were scared witless of the screamer and refused to use it, sticking with the more rideable "big bang" engine. Doohan was the only man who could stay on the thing, never mind win on it, which just adds to the incredulity at his 1997 statistics. Casey Stoner's 800cc Ducati is also a screamer, and while many claim that it is easier to ride due to its trick electronics, he is still the only person who can ride it quickly. Last year, Loris Capirossi was way off Stoner's pace on an identical machine. So far this year, Marco Melandri is faring even worse on the Ducati, while Guintoli and Elias have both struggled on the customer version. As Ducati keep trying to tell us, "It's not the bike, it's Casey!"

So there are similarities between these two Australians, but also differences. While Doohan stuck with Honda for his whole career and had the bikes developed specifically for him, Stoner realised that he was never going to be HRC and Michelin's "great white hope" (that being Dani Pedrosa), but he could try switching to Ducati and Bridgestone, who seemed to be more willing to help him out. It turned out to be a master stroke, as Stoner is now Ducati's Doohan, as it were. In fact, Stoner has come further, faster than Doohan did in his early career. The 2007 champion has shown in testing and this year's first GP that he is just as good, if not better than last year. Amazingly, he is just 22 years old. Who would bet against Casey becoming a 5-time world champion? The Stoner versus Doohan debate has years left to run, but I strongly suspect that in a few years another quick young Aussie will appear and be labelled "The next Stoner".

A Baby Star Is Born In Qatar

Ever heard of Scott Redding? You have now. The English kid became the youngest rider ever to qualify on the front row of a Grand Prix grid when he started from 4th place in the 125cc Qatar Grand Prix at Losail (15 years and 65 days old, if you were wondering.)

Even to my untrained eye, the teenager's riding style was beautifully positive and smooth compared to a lot of the more experienced riders behind him, with some people saying they couldn't help comparing it to the style of a certain Valentino Rossi when he was a nipper. I think that would be what you call high praise.

In the race, Redding was quick, consistent and took no prisoners, battling his way as high as 3rd place and finishing 5th after being spat out the back of a 3-bike slipstreaming battle just before the finish line. You would forgive the kid for being mildly disappointed as he was so tantalizingly close to the podium, but he is still the youngest Grand Prix rider ever to finish in the top 5. It was a truly incredible debut performance, battling with riders who have dozens, or even hundreds of 125GP starts under their belts, and looking like he belonged there. After the race, he just looked at the camera, smiled and mimed a wide open throttle. You ain't joking, kid!

It's a cliche, but a star is born. He is clearly one of the most impressive talents to appear in 125GP for a long while, of any nationality. It's going to be fascinating watching his rise to the top.

I should also mention Redding's fellow Brits Bradley Smith, who took Britain's first 125GP pole since 1972(!!!) but finished 16th after his steering damper fell off, and Danny Webb, who started 5th and finished a career-best 6th on a 2nd-string bike.

For more info on Scott Redding, check out The Biker Place, which is your best bet for information about all the young British hopefuls.

MotoGP Qatar: Back to the Future

So, little Casey won the Qatar GP at Losail, did he? Well, I'll be damned. Never saw that one coming. He had to fight for it, but the Aussie ended up disappearing into the distance, just like last year. What was different from last year was that there was a decent race, plus the whole thing happened under floodlights.

The bikes were magnificently shiny under the artificial lighting, with the Ducati looking so gorgeous you just wanted to peel the stickers off and eat it. (Make up your own gratuitous reference to Adriana here.) Stoner didn't have it all his own way. His Bridgestone qualifying tyres were poor compared to the Michelins. Technogeezer Neil Spalding reckoned this might have something to do with Michelin winning last year's British Superbike championship in the freezing cold (last summer sucked, dammit!) Anyway, Stoner and Rossi were the only two people to get anything out of the Japanese tyres all weekend.

Yamaha had taken an amazing 1-2-3 in qualifying, the amazing thing being that none of them had a dayglow yellow number 46 on the front. Pole position sitter was Jorge "so breathtakingly arrogant he's hilarious" Lorenzo with the brand new trick air-valve Yamaha. James Toseland made a monkey of Colin Edwards for the first of probably many times this year by taking 2nd spot on the grid with the wheezing steel-sprung Yamaha, while Colin Edwards snatched 3rd to leave Stoner 4th. Valentino Rossi was 7th despite shearing off most of his hair to reduce wind resistance. (Apparently donating it to 250GP rider Simoncelli, whose enormous mop of hair is now strangely fascinating). Pedrosa could only manage 8th.

Tiny genius Dani Pedrosa managed to stop bitching about his team-mate long enough to get an incredible start and lead into turn one, from the 3rd row of the grid! Lorenzo, Toseland and Dovizioso were all near the front, while Stoner and Rossi looked on in bemusement. Toseland pulled out a hilarious World Superbike move on Lorenzo at one point to take second, slamming the Spaniard out of the way in much the same way as the average English tourist on the Costa del Sol would do to one of the natives.

When Stoner finally decided to turn the wick up and win the race, he passed everyone and effed off into the desert, but Lorenzo was in close pursuit for a while. Pedrosa stayed in there for 3rd, just to annoy Rossi. (Dani had clipped the Italian in practise, launching the Honda into a gravel trap, or jaggy boulder trap to be more accurate, and re-hurting his tiny little arm.) The funniest thing that happened on the last lap was when Valentino Rossi got shoved aside by young Dovi on the Honda. Take that, Doctor. At least it'll fire Vale up for the season. Toseland finished behind Rossi, well in front of Edwards, who lost touch with the leading pack for a change.

So what can we deduce from the first race? Well, firstly that we can't deduce anything from a race in the dark on a freezing track. Secondly that Stoner is going to win the championship again. Thirdly that the rookies are quick and don't care who they have to trample to prove it. Lorenzo is as quick as he thinks he is, Toseland is as hard as he claims not to be, Dovizioso isn't scared of guys like Rossi. Melandri finished about 3 days behind Stoner on identical kit. Marco's basically finished now. Sure, he'll keep going for years, maybe snatch a victory or two, but Stoner has pretty much ruined the Italian's life. It turns out the Ducati #2 position is a poisoned chalice, and Marco took a few long gulps out of it before he caught the faint whiff of almonds.

The air-sprung Yamahas are quick and agile, the steel sprung Yamahas are slow and agile. The 2008 Honda is a damn sight better than it seemed. The Suzuki and Kwaka bikes are as mediocre as ever. The Ducati is a rocket-powered truck that doesn't go round corners unless Casey Stoner says the magic word. Stoner makes the Bologna Bullet unbeatable, but nobody else can even pretend to make it look like a decent bike. Certainly not Marco.

It looks like being an interesting year, even if Stoner looks as strong as ever.

WSBK Phillip Island: Baylisstic Crashfest

The makers of motorcycle crash videos must be rubbing their hands with glee after a day of sheer carnage at Phillip Island when the World Superbikes came a-calling. Troy Bayliss emerged from the smoking wreckage around him with a dominant double victory. Here is an account of the various crashes.

Race one opened with a massive crash on the start line as Michel Fabrizio failed to get his Ducati off the front row. Instead of waving his arms around like we would expect from any self-respecting Italian, he just stood there and waited to be hit. And that's what happened. A couple of bikes narrowly missed him, but the hapless Vittorio Iannuzzo couldn't see the stalled Ducati until the last millisecond, and slammed into the back of it. Iannuzzo was lucky not to get squished by his bike, but was carted off in an ambulance with a badly broken wrist, while Fabrizio was left hopping around on one foot. Incredibly, the crash had ripped his boot off but left him with nothing more than nasty bruising to his calf muscle.

When the red flags came out, Carlos Checa slowed slightly at the top of Lukey Heights, but then he too was rear-ended by Russel Holland. The Aussie had done well in Superpole and made a decent start, but he didn't clock that Carlos was easing off. The resulting crash was enormous, with Checa flipped off his bike into the air. Luckily both riders were able to make the restart, along with the limping Fabrizio.

The restarted race one saw Bayliss win easily. The only person who really looked to have the pace to challenge was Max Biaggi, who had started from 16th because the gear shifter fell off on his outlap in Superpole. Max sliced through the field, but unfortunately got a bit too excited and fell off from 2nd place. Troy Corser fought through to snatch 2nd, while the heroic Fabrizio took an excellent 3rd place, and promptly started hamming up his injury for the cameras.

Race two started fairly uneventfully, in that nobody was taken to hospital before the end of lap 1. Troy Corser jumped the start horribly, but didn't come in for his ride-through penalty, claiming that the black flag board had a pair of number ones in two different fonts that didn't look like a number eleven. Nice excuse, but he didn't get to try it out on the race stewards because he flew off the track at turn 2, saying that there was fluid on the track. Fabrizio was amongst the riders spooked into jumping the start by Corser, but he did manage to stay on the bike long enough to suffer a ride-through.

Max Biaggi again managed to devastate the field from his lowly grid spot, but then conjured up a truly terrifying crash at turn one, which is officially more frightening than watching "Halloween" with one eyeball and old footage of Maggie Thatcher with the other. Trying to pass Fonsi Nieto's Suzuki drag-bike on the start-finish straight, Max got very, very close and had to grab a lot more front brake than he would have liked. The rear wheel lifted off the ground, the bike started to slew sideways and suddenly Max was sliding across the grass at well over 100mph. The magnificent Ducati 1098R started tumbling, and leapt a good 10 feet into the air, completely destroying itself but managing to avoid squidging its rider into seagull food. The Roman Emperor escaped with a suspected fractured wrist, and will be glad that the next race is a month away.

Troy Bayliss won race 2 in similar style to race 1, leading no less than 3 Spaniards to the line: Checa, Nieto and Xaus. Surprisingly it was Xaus who was beaten up by the others, being on the wrong end of several dodgy overtaking moves. Carlos Checa did brilliantly considering the enormous crash he had earlier in the day, showing that he isn't fazed by the lowish grip Pirelli control tyre (but this is the guy that did so well on the awful Dunlop MotoGP tyre a couple of years back). Fonsi Nieto kept up his impressive start to the season and is 2nd in the championship, albeit 27 points behind Bayliss.

Bayliss is still a superhero around Phillip Island, and the Ducati is ludicrously fast (though a few clicks slower than the fours down the straights). Biaggi was the big surprise, falling off everywhere and scoring nul points while his team-mate, Ruben Xaus of all people, stayed on track with a pair of 4ths and is 3rd in the title race. It's going to be interesting to see what happens at the tight, twisty (i.e. Ducati) track at Valencia, where Crazy Catalan Xaus scored a victory last year...